PMadriani 12.5 - The Second Man (14 page)

 

Chapter 4

H
ER PRINCIPAL VALUE
rested not in her ability to kill her victims, though she was proficient in this. Her usefulness flowed from her knowledge of forensic science and, in particular, trace evidence, hair and fibers, minute particles of dirt, pollen, and other microscopic bits of information that could compromise a job. Sometimes she worked alone and sometimes with others to make sure they made no mistakes and left no telltale signs behind.

You could call her a hired mercenary, but of a special kind. She seldom, if ever, worked in a war zone; almost always in developed countries, Western Europe, the first world nations of Asia, the Middle East, and the Americas.

Governments and large corporations hired her because they knew her skills and could afford the price of her services. She spoke several languages, Spanish, Portuguese, French, a smattering of German along with some Russian. Her English, though fluent, if you listened closely, carried a hint of what sounded like a Spanish trill, so that you might mistake her background as Latin American if you didn't know better.

Ana Agirre was Basque, born in the Pyrenees Mountains between France and Spain. Her great-grandfather died in the bombing of Guernica by the Germans in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War, a travesty made famous by Picasso's painting of the same name. Both her father and her mother worked in the Basque underground before the end of the Franco regime and then afterward, part of the ETA, the Basque separatist movement. Her mother died smuggling explosives during an ETA mission in Barcelona. Her father was taken prisoner. She never saw him again. At the time Ana was eight.

Raised by her maternal grandmother, she excelled in school, particularly in science. She graduated from secondary school a year ahead of her classmates. Given her family background and the fear of retaliation by the Spanish government, Ana was sent to college in Paris. She could have taken courses preparing her for medical school or any of the research fields. Instead, she chose criminalistics and later took a job in the crime lab of the Police Nationale, successor to the fabled Sûreté. The French didn't seem to care about her family's background. In fact, some voiced sympathy for the Basque people and their repression under Franco. There she learned and refined her forensic skills.

One would have thought she was on a mission to rehabilitate her family so earnestly did she study, absorbing everything she saw and learned with the zeal of a monk. What she masked was anger, anger at the world for having taken from her the one person in her life who she loved more than life itself, her mother. It was a painful loss, one she could never get over. It came to her in her nightmares, the brilliant flash of fire, the sensation of heat and the shattering sound of the explosion that ripped her mother to pieces. Though she had not witnessed it, she had now seen enough to know what it would have been like, the aftermath of a blast from nearly two kilos, four pounds, of RDX, what the American military called C-4 and the British termed PE-4.

Since she was ten, when she had overheard the whispered conversations of her aunts and uncles in the parlor of her grandmother's house, Ana had known that her mother's coffin, buried in the graveyard of the small church in their village, was empty. There was no body inside. After the blast, police and firefighters had found nothing except bits of charred fabric from her mother's clothing, none of them larger than a few centimeters in size. They determined the source of the explosion from chemical tests at the site.

C-4 was stable. It smelled like motor oil and had the pliable texture of children's clay. But when subjected to heat or the shock produced by a detonator, it would explode with a fiery ear-shattering blast that could level half a city block.

Ana concluded that the bomb must have already been armed with a detonator when whoever made it handed it to her mother. It went off on a quiet street in a Barcelona suburb. The only victims were her mother and Ana, who was left to fend for herself.

She remained with the Paris crime lab for six years before moving on to a private laboratory that contracted its services to the French military. There she came in contact with representatives for corporate mercenaries who ultimately hired her as an independent contractor. Ana set up her own business. For large fees, sometimes seven figures, she asked no questions and did whatever was asked of her.

Want to burn down a building? Ana would provide you with an incendiary device that would completely consume itself in the flames. Investigators might find the precise location where the fire originated, and if they had sufficient equipment they might sniff out the chemical accelerants. But as to any other evidence, there would be none.

With the money she earned, she purchased a small estate in the hills above the Côte d'Azur in the South of France. There she moved in her grandmother and one of her aging aunts.

While they quietly plied the garden and cooked, Ana traveled the world rendering advice to her corporate and government black-bag clients on how best to sanitize crime scenes, the proper clothing to wear to avoid leaving trace evidence, as well as ways and means to commit undetectable “accidents,” almost all of them fatal.

Drug overdoses were often the death of choice if for no other reason than that most people, including the authorities, believed that those who possessed power and wealth might also be possessed by powerful demons. If there was any hint of past drug use, police seldom looked too far in the direction of criminal homicide unless there was some reason to do so. Ana's job was to make sure there was none. This was the kind of subtle refinement that the terrorist community was edging toward as a means of avoiding state-led military retribution whenever possible. If authorities could not prove an intentional killing, it was politically difficult to strike back. Yet the result was the same: an enemy was dead. There was a growing demand for Ana's services, acts that seldom made bold headlines in newspapers and were a blip on the radar of networks and cable news stations.

At times she would render personal service, hands-on expertise, but that always required a substantially higher fee because of the risks involved.

As you might assume, one did not find a listing for Ana Agirre in any phone book or on the World Wide Web. To those who used her services, she was known as “L'architecte de la mort,” “the Architect of Death.” Jobs were always on a referral basis, from those she trusted and who had used her services previously. One always kept a low profile in her business.

She was lean and strong, five foot nine, a little taller than average, a face you would not notice in a crowd, neither ugly nor fetching, a passing figure no one would ever remember. Ana the Architect did nothing to alter this appearance. She wore no makeup, never donned high heels, and wore no jewelry. Her uniform of choice was a dark sweater-jersey, dark slacks, and black flat rubber-soled deck shoes. Nothing expensive or unique with intricate sole patterns. Her hair was cut short in the fashion of early photographs taken of Audrey Hepburn, something that a victim would have difficulty getting a grip on in a frenzied attempt to fight her off—that is, if they ever saw her coming in the first place. Usually she was so quick and agile that all they would catch was a glimpse through glazed eyes of her back as she walked away. It would likely be the last thing they would ever see.

This morning she was busy reading the online version of the
San Diego Union-Tribune
about an accident near San Diego, California. She sipped her coffee while sitting at one of the outdoor tables at Le Sancerre on the rue des Abbesses in Paris. It was close to the apartment she maintained in the city. She read the scant details on her e-tablet using the portable hot spot in her purse.

“A single fatality, an unidentified woman. The other driver was arrested, believed to have been under the influence of alcohol. The survivor, a man in his twenties, suffered only minor injuries and was taken to a local area hospital for treatment. No identification of the dead driver has been made pending notification of next of kin.”

Ana did not know the dead woman's name, but she knew she had been murdered. The French mercenaries, a group of high-tech engineers who had constructed the equipment that caused the accident, had told her to watch the news in this part of California, the area around San Diego.

She had seen only digital pictures of the items, including the large rolling case that was highly unique. It was too big to carry on board an airplane, so it had to be checked. They had marked the case with holograms, making it easily identifiable at baggage claim so that no one would carry it off by mistake. You could just grab it and go. They also sent the specs for the equipment.

This was composed of a computer, its software, and a portable satellite antenna dish capable of overriding most of the electronics and computer-driven safety and other features built into late-model passenger cars.

Ana made a down payment on the equipment because she needed it for a job in Europe. It was a highly lucrative contract involving the untimely accidental death of an executive, the managing partner of a large multinational corporation. If the schedule on the contract for the executive was to be maintained, the gentleman was slated to be dead in two weeks. After that, bad things would happen to the people who hired her.

Ana was anxious to get her hands on the equipment and get the job done. However, the French technicians who built the system insisted on “field-testing” it first before they delivered it to her. They said nothing about a field test at the time she ordered the equipment. Now the stuff was off in California somewhere. According to the French makers, if all went well there would be two dead targets, separate motorists in separate vehicles on a two-lane highway in a rural area east of San Diego. The Frenchmen gave her the date and told her to watch the news. They seemed giddy with excitement.

The news story gave the sorry details. They had not banked on the intervention of a passing motorist. By then it was too late. The surviving victim had been pulled from the burning wreckage. What should have been two clean fatalities and a closed accident file suddenly turned into vehicular manslaughter with dangling threads and probing lawyers who, if they persisted, might find their way back to her. She wanted her software and her equipment back, or better yet destroyed so that no part of it could end up in a crime lab.

She had visions of Lockerbie, where a massive Pan Am passenger jet was brought down by a small explosive device. Two years later scientists in a crime lab managed to identify a single electronic component from the bomb's detonator, a piece of plastic smaller than a baby's fingernail. They traced it back to its point of sale, and from there to two Libyan nationals, who were delivered up by Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

Ana worried that the same could happen with the equipment she had commissioned if it fell into the hands of the authorities. They would trace it back to its French builders, and from them to her, even though she had never used it. She could end up dressed in an orange jumpsuit in the place the Americans called Gitmo.

The whole thing, the field test, had an air of the unprofessional about it. It had the scent of the American CIA, whose budget was being slashed and whose better operatives were being turned out to pasture in the post–Iraq War world, with other unaligned terrorist groups rampaging through the ruins. She couldn't be sure who the French makers of the equipment were dealing with.

It was true what they said about the Americans. No one could rely on them any longer. They had reached their zenith and were now on the way down, a toothless lion dying in its den. Not only did their government lack the political resolve to defend itself or its allies, it was now missing the basic proficiency to carry out politically sensitive covert operations. To silence those who needed silencing.

A US military clerk with low or no security clearance had taken highly classified government cables, copied them to thumb drives, and delivered them to Internet bloggers for transmission to the public over the World Wide Web. The embarrassment that followed compromised US diplomats removed from their posts, the State Department held up to ridicule, and the National Security Agency exposed for eavesdropping on US allied leaders. Another clerk had stolen top secrets and absconded first to China and then Russia, leaving a trail of confidential American secrets like bread crumbs in his wake. No one knew yet the full extent of the damage, certainly not the American public. Their government was powerless to do anything about it other than downplay it and look for political cover.

At the same time, Washington was awash in amateurish domestic scandals and clumsy cover-ups. To listen to them, every computer the government owned had crashed on cue, coincidentally destroying evidence of government-committed crimes in the process. No one believed the obvious lies—“the spin,” as they called it from the White House—but those in power didn't care. They couldn't be prosecuted because they controlled the machinery of enforcement, and to them, that was all that mattered. They had lost all sense of the art, always to provide one's prince with the refuge of credible deniability, what the British called a scintilla of truth.

Ana made a mental note. These people, whoever they were, were incompetent and, for that reason, dangerous. She would do whatever was possible to learn who they were so that she could avoid doing any business with them in the future. But first she had to recover the laptop, the software, and the small dish antenna that the French mercenaries who built the device had given them to field test.

She finished her coffee, paid the waiter, and grabbed her purse. A minute later she was racing down the street astride the blue Piaggio BV500, helmet on her head, cruising toward the train station and her trip south back to her estate in order to pack for her trip to L.A.

 

Chapter 5

T
HIS MORNING W
E
huddle in the conference room at our office, behind Miguel's Concina and the Brigantine Restaurant on Orange Avenue in Coronado.

Pages and files are spread out all over the table as I sit with Harry and our investigator, Herman Diggs, trying to gain a handle on the latest blizzard of paper affecting Alex Ives.

Alex is staying with his mother and father at their home following the bail hearing. This was an exercise that proved to be easier than we thought and is still a mystery to me as to why. There was good news and good news. The first being the apparent lack of knowledge on the part of the cops regarding Ives's connection to Olinda Serna. They seem to be blissfully ignorant of the fact that Ives and his employer were working on a hot news flash in which Serna presumably had a talking role. We don't know the details because Ives still isn't telling us, and his boss has, to date, been unavailable, at least to me. I have left three phone messages for Tory Graves at the
Washington Gravesite,
the digital dirt sheet for which Ives works. None of these have been returned. We assume that if the cops knew about the connection between Ives and Serna, the prosecutor would probably have dumped it on us during the bail hearing, evidence of possible intent in an effort to deny bail. Though this is not a certainty. Using this information in a surprise package at trial could do wonders for a conviction, even if they made no effort to enhance the charges. Letting the jury know that Ives knew Serna and was pursuing her when he passed out behind the wheel and killed her is one of those “wow” factors certain to light up the jury box.

The other happy news was the cost of bail, a mere twenty-five-thousand-dollar bond imposed by the judge, well below the local bail schedule. How this happened is a mystery, though it appeared not to be the doing of the prosecutor as much as the man seated behind him. Beyond the bar rail in the first row of spectator seats was another man, suited up for combat and packing a slick patent-leather briefcase. We found out later this was one of the premium-priced lawyers, a criminal practitioner from Serna's law firm up in L.A.

Apparently they thought enough of her to send somebody down to watch. He conferred with the deputy D.A. over the railing and, after they talked, the prosecutor asked for only twenty-five thousand dollars bail. Even the judge was surprised.

The D.A. then went on to explain that Ives had a job and family contacts in the community. He even gestured toward Alex's mom and dad sitting behind us, as if the state had produced them, shining character witnesses for the defendant. He told the judge it was a first offense, only marginal evidence of alcohol in the defendant's system. He never even mentioned the French-fried cadaver in the other car, so that by the time he was finished, there was nothing left for me to talk about. I sat there with my thumb in my mouth. If you can't say anything on behalf of your client that is more helpful than what the D.A. has to say, it is best not to say anything at all.

When the judge demanded that Ives surrender his passport and agree not to leave the state pending trial, I looked at the prosecutor wondering if he might object. It was almost as if somebody wanted Ives to skip town and jump bail.

His parents posted the bond out of pocket change. I had a come-
to-Jesus
moment with the kid outside the courtroom and told him in no uncertain terms not to wander too far. Even if his boss demanded that he travel back east on business, he was not to go. He promised me that he would not, smiled, and they left. Stranger things have happened to me in courtrooms, but not recently. It left me to wonder.

“
A
CCORDING TO THE
accident report, neither driver appears to have applied their brakes prior to impact,” says Harry. He has the document prepared by the California Highway Patrol in front of him on the table. “No skid marks on the pavement, though the intersecting road traveled by Ives was dirt until it reached the county highway where they impacted. Still nothing on the pavement to indicate any braking. Serna's rented car was moving at a relatively slow rate of speed, estimated between thirty and forty miles an hour at the point of impact,” says Harry.

We are in the process of trying to find out if the navigation satellite system and its proprietors will be able to supply us with any information as to the car Alex was driving and the location of the party that night.

“Let's start with the time of the accident.”

“According to the report, the estimate of time is about eleven
p.m.
” says Harry. “The witness who pulled Ives from the burning wreck called it in at eleven-oh-six. He said he tried to get to Serna, but the flames were too hot. That slowed him down on the call.”

“What was the speed limit?” I ask him.

Harry flips back one page. “Fifty-five,” he tells me.

“So why was Serna going so slow?” I ask.

“Maybe she was looking for something,” says Herman. Herman Diggs is a big man, African-American to the soul, former athlete who blew out a knee in college and lost out on a career in football. He has been with us for ten years now, long enough and on such intimate terms that he is now part of the family.

“Not much out there to look for,” says Harry. He turns the file toward Herman, who looks at the printout, a satellite photo, probably from Google Maps, showing an overhead shot of desolate desert, a narrow strip of concrete like a gray ribbon running across it with a red marker at the fatal intersection.

“There is the other road,” says Herman. He means the dirt strip traveled by Ives. “Maybe she was looking for that.”

“You think they were meeting up out there?” I ask him.

Herman shrugs a shoulder. “What did the kid tell you?”

“Nothing. Says he can't remember,” I say.

“If they were getting ready to meet, we can be relatively certain that Ives wasn't sitting around waiting for her,” says Harry. “According to the report, the estimated speed of Ives's car, a late-model luxury sedan, was approaching eighty miles per hour and accelerating as it entered the highway and impacted the other car. Caved in the entire driver's-side door on Serna's car. Bent it like a pretzel.”

“Sounds like a missile,” says Herman. “Where'd a kid that age get a ride like that? Must be six figures fully dressed out with all the gadgets and gizmos.”

“It was owned by his parents' aviation servicing company,” I tell him. “They let him use it from time to time.”

“Bet they don't do that again,” says Herman.

“According to the accident report, this kind of high speed and acceleration prior to impact is consistent with a driver who has fallen asleep or gone unconscious behind the wheel.” Harry is still on point, trekking through the report.

“Still, she makes no effort to evade him. She must have seen him coming,” I say.

“On a dirt road doing eighty. That would likely send up a dust trail a blind Indian could follow,” says Herman.

“Let me see that photo again,” I tell Harry. He passes it over to me. It is difficult to tell from the air, but there doesn't appear to be any elevation, rises that might obscure Serna's vision of the approaching vehicle. No trees or other obstructions.

“She could have been looking at something in her car,” says Harry. “A map. Maybe her cell phone. That would explain why she was traveling so slow.”

“Maybe.” I pass the report back to him.

“More interesting,” says Harry, “is the fact that the preliminary toxicology report shows the absence of any drugs in Ives's system.”

This was the big surprise of the day. We are all smiles around the table with the news. While it may not cut our client loose entirely, it offers a big headache to the prosecution, who now must explain to the jury how the defendant became unconscious behind the wheel.

The cops are now batting zero for two. No alcohol, at least nothing approaching the presumptive level of intoxication, and no drugs. So that means we have an unconscious client under the influence of nothing.

“Any kind of medical condition,” asks Herman, “might account for his problem?”

“Not that we know of,” says Harry.

“I asked Ives on the phone this morning and he says no,” I tell them. “He's never passed out, never fainted. Had a physical two months ago and passed it with flying colors.”

“So what caused it?” says Herman.

“Could have been drugs,” I tell him.

“But they didn't find any,” says Harry.

“Some of the more complex drugs take a while. Could be weeks before they have a final report. And then there are some they don't even look for in the routine screenings unless there's a reason.”

“You mean roofies?” says Herman. “The date rape drug?”

“There's that one and there's others. It is a possibility,” I say. “Police don't usually order them up in the normal toxicology screening.”

These are known as predator drugs, used by some perpetrators either to engage in sexual assault on the unconscious victim or to rob them. Either way the victim usually remembers nothing when it's over.

They work like conscious sedation and in some countries are used as an anesthetic. Those under their effect lose motor coordination. Their eyes may be open but nothing is being registered in the brain. They result in near total loss of memory during the period that the victim is under the influence.

“Fits the profile of what Ives described as his symptoms,” says Harry. “They're absorbed into the system quickly. All trace gone within at most seventy-two hours. They show up in urine tests. Here they drew only blood.” Harry's skimming through the report. “Here it is, ‘Benzodiazepine.' They didn't check the box, didn't ask for it.”

“It's too late now,” says Herman.

“I asked Alex about the possibility the last time we talked to him, you and I at the jail,” I tell them. “The question whether somebody might have slipped something to him. It wasn't lost on him. The thought had crossed his mind before I mentioned it. He wondered about the girl, the one who invited him to the party, and whether it was a setup. The single glass of champagne. The fact she never showed at the party. It weighed on his mind.”

“I know what you're saying,” says Herman. “There's no way Ives coulda driven like hell and gone out into the desert if somebody slipped him a roofie. What that means, somebody delivered him out there. Accident was staged. Is that what you're sayin'? That whoever did it, killed Serna? So there was no mishap involved.”

I nod.

“Here we go again,” says Harry. “Why can't we just keep this simple? Straightforward DUI with the cops showing no evidence. We push hard enough and they'll kick him loose. Case over. We can move on.”

“They nearly did that at the bail hearing,” I tell him. “The question is why? Think about it. What do we know?”

“Not much,” says Harry.

“On the contrary. We know that Ives was shadowing Serna, not in a physical way, but he had her in the journalistic cross hairs over something. According to Alex, it's big, but for the moment off the record. Somebody drugs him and takes him out into the desert. They smash two cars together, one of them at high speed carrying Alex, the other one with Serna inside. Was she conscious at the time?” I ask.

“What, you think they drugged her too?” says Harry. “Why not just drown her and dump her on some beach somewhere?”

“Because then there would be evidence. Somebody would have to walk in the sand to dump the body. She might struggle. You'd get bruising, maybe something under her fingernails. This way there is nothing. Major collision and fire. The bodies are burned. If it had worked out the way they planned it, both of them would be dead and we wouldn't be involved to ask any questions.”

“You think they were out to get the boy as well?” says Herman.

“Be my guess. Given the reckless nature of the collision. There was certainly no assurance Ives would survive the impact, let alone the fire. The only reason Alex is alive is because a passing motorist pulled him from the wreck. If I had to guess, I would say that our Good Samaritan wasn't part of their opera. Something they failed to plan for.”

“You know you're getting paranoid,” says Harry. “Soon you'll be seeing black helicopters.”

“Give me another theory that explains the events,” I tell him.

“OK, tell me one thing,” he says. “Both cars were moving. If both Serna and Ives were unconscious, how did they do that?”

I think for a moment, shake my head. “I don't know.”

“There you go,” says Harry. “Problem with your theory is it doesn't work.”

Harry goes back to the accident report, looking for something. He finds the pages and starts to read, running his finger over the paper.

“Have you talked to the kid about this?” says Herman. “The fact that somebody may have tried to kill him?”

“Not in so many words.”

“Don't you think you should? Assuming you're right, if they tried once, what's to stop 'em from trying again?”

“Nothing, I suppose.”

“He can't run,” says Herman. “Can't hide. Bail conditions see to that.”

“Yeah. It's all pretty convenient, isn't it?” I tell him.

Herman arches an eyebrow. “So what do we do? Where do we go from here?” He flips open his little notebook ready to jot down whatever little tidbits I can give him.

“Two unknowns,” I tell him. “First the mystery girl. We have only a partial name and a description. Asian, very good looking, long dark hair about the middle of her back, about five foot five or five six. First name or nickname, Ben. She has a tattoo on the inside of her left thigh, red and blue, probably a dragon or the tail of a dragon.”